


Aftershocks

by lightningwaltz



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Kissing, Post-Apocalypse, World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 09:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6112261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Final Fantasy VI Kiss Battle. Prompt: "[Locke] stumbles into Mobliz in the earlier days of the World of Ruin."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftershocks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lirillith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/gifts).



It makes sense for aftershocks to be commonplace after the world ends. Something so cataclysmic _should_ be marked by the earth protesting its degradation. But every time it happens- no matter how minimal- Locke’s body becomes as cold as it had been on the deck of Setzer’s airship. Seismic activity had always been intermittent in Kohlingen. And it had always devastating, particularly during certain time periods in the agricultural season. A year of work could be undone in a moment, as if some archaic god had decided to author entire families out of existence. 

And, most important of all, there had been that first earthquake that had signified Kefka’s total ascendancy. The tremors from it had even effected the air, shoving through oxygen and hydrogen and other things that typically only concerned the scholars in Narshe. 

During his fall back to earth, Locke had decided that this was the sensation of failure in its purest form. 

And during that fall, Locke had finally understood Rachel. 

Locke knows, for a fact, that Mobliz’s remaining citizens have had even worse experiences with earthquakes. Although, perhaps that’s why they can be so cool and nonchalant about them. If nothing else, he has learned that the mind and body can trick you into accepting horrifying new realities. Today’s tremor is an insignificant one, as though their continental shelf is being gently rocked in a hammock. Katarin doesn’t even flinch, though she curses when half of her tea spills out of its cup and stings her hand. 

Meanwhile, Locke has been holding a knife for his breakfast, and it somehow cuts through his glove, into his palm. Close to the bone. Katarin immediately says something like “oh no!” and runs to get Terra. However, there had been nothing like distress or disgust in her eyes. She had good reason to be used to the slight of blood. 

Terra is equally calm and focused as she attends to his wound, though he knows her serene affect hides many things. 

“I don’t think I like earthquakes either,” she murmurs after making sure the kids are out of earshot. Most of his tension loosens, and he wonders at the restorative power of being understood. 

He makes a few jokes anyway, tries to laugh it out. Terra fixes him with a flinty, inquisitive stare, like _why don’t your words match what I see in your face?_

Terra works a cure spell over his injury, and that gives him another thing to ponder. His nerves braid back together, the rent in his skin meets and close up like a zipper. Below that, though, there’s still phantom pain. His confused blood races to meet a wound that no longer exists. It’s characteristic of the lowest level cure spell done by a total novice. When their lost party had started the ghoulish practice of equipping magicite, they’d all realized the depth of skill on display by their natural magic users. The amount of practice that must have taken place with artificial magic users such as Celes.

He shoots Terra a wondering look of his own. She responds with a motion he’d never seen her do before the world ended; she tucks some hair behind her ears, and glances away. It doesn’t matter though. He knows how she appears whenever she’s experiencing her particular brand of existential fear. He reaches out, takes her hand in his, and gives it a consoling squeeze. His newly healed hand still stings below the surface, and the sensation is redoubled with this gesture. It feels oddly good, though. 

Terra presses back. This is another thing that rarely happened in the old days. 

The day takes an interesting turn when Duane starts hollering something from the roof. His telescope had picked up on something strange in the near distance. Terra casts some sort of scanning spell on it, and takes a look for herself. While they wait for her assessment, Locke finds himself staring at her ponytail. Quite a few tendrils have pulled themselves free, and they brush against her neck in the breeze. 

“It’s some kind of skeleton,” she says. “Though not of any animals I’ve seen around here.” 

The whole damn town ends up making a daytrip out of it. It’s dangerous to go out into the wilds but, since his arrival, the desiccated village had been attacked several times by demons. There’s no place that could rightly be called safe, and the kids have been grouchy with cabin fever after several days of torrential rain. So off they all go.

They follow a rusty set of train tracks. Early on, it’s missing its slats of wood; Duane regularly yanked them out for an easy supply of fuel. He often grumbled about how it was a finite resource, and someday he would have to go way too far to collect them. That day hadn’t come yet, though.

A few months ago, Locke had followed this exact trail in reverse. After Kefka, he’d returned to Kohlingen. He had told himself that it was for Rachel’s sake, but, in honest moods, he admits he was like a wounded animal crawling home to die. The place that had housed Rachel had been leveled, and he’d been met with blank looks whenever he’d asked about the old man. He had clawed at the dirt for her bones, because she deserved the proper burial and consecration that Locke had denied her. The earth had been unkind in that matter too. 

When he’d had ears to listen to any other information, he’d discovered that the Veldt had become a treacherous hellscape. No one ever returned if they’d ventured there for news or food. Locke had blown his remaining money- ah, yes, financial systems still asserted themselves in the apocalypse- and had gone on what he’d assumed would be the final journey of his life. 

Instead, he’d rediscovered Terra. Newly made, with a strange mix of old inquisitiveness and new confidence, but Terra all the same. 

“I heard the Sabin and Cyan met Gau out here when we all got separated,” she says, taking her place beside him. He always marvels at how easily she invokes their missing companions. 

“Yeah, I heard so, too. I also heard they had to go over a waterfall and take rafts back to us.” He kicks at a piece of pumice, then thinks better of it and pockets it for later. The world’s end had scattered volcanic rock all over the place, and its ground down powder could be used for all sorts of things. Locke keeps his eyes open for quartz or fools gold, too. Such minerals commanded nothing special in any economy anywhere, but the kids in Mobliz were wild for anything shiny or beautiful. “They neglected to mention that they could have just taken a train home.” 

“No, that wouldn’t have worked,” Terra says, missing that he’d made a joke. Or maybe she just wants to explain, to put things in order. “The Empire had disrupted that railway, since it comes from Doma. Also trains only came to Mobliz every two weeks. They must have come here in between trains and it would have been bad to wait that long.” 

It’s a reasonable explanation. However, Locke remembers that Sabin could be remarkably patient. It probably came from decades up in the mountains, perfecting martial arts, and meditating on meaning of life. If it had just been Sabin, he might have waited. However, war and resistance had a way of taking the individual out of the equation. It had a way of making a person go, go, _go_ , hurrying into confrontation and battle. 

Things could change for the worse in in an instant, nowadays, but nothing compels a similar rush into an inevitable outcome. There’s only survival. They’re only required to salvage happiness from the wreckage, and there’s no clear timetable for that. They get to decide their criteria for failure and success. 

The yellow-gray steppes play tricks on the mind. Locke should have been accustomed to this; Kohlingen had been a flat countryside as well. It’s still a surprise how long it takes for them to reach the skeleton. It had appeared to be a mere ten minutes away, but they arrive at it after a little over an hour of walking. 

It’s truly a strange specimen. Lizard-like, perfectly intact, and absolutely enormous. The kids let out whoops of excitement and run around to get a full look. One of the quieter children sits down, and starts to sketch it in a rare and precious notebook. Other than his artistic inclination, he’s nothing like Relm. The lack of resemblance does nothing to help the sudden soreness in Locke’s throat. 

Terra circles around, before finding her way back to Locke. “It’s an esper,” she says, confirming his suspicions. She wonders if it speaks to her like the one in Narshe. Or maybe she knows on sight. “Do you think it one from when they… they came out of the gate?” 

Guilt emanates out of her, like the heat that arises from nearby sunbaked boulders. Her expression remains unchanging, but he senses it anyway. 

“No, definitely not.” Fossils had been one of his most reliable sources of income, especially when the fashionable folks of Jidoor had become obsessed with wearing amulets with ancient insects encased in amber. So he points out all the signs of age in the esper’s bones. 

“I see. So it’s someone from the War of the Magi.” _Someone. Not something._ She splays her fingers over its leg, and lowers her head for a long moment. He doesn’t know if she’s praying, or thinking, but she’d done this every time someone had handed her some magicite. Back then he’d wanted to touch her. He’d wanted to leech all that pain away from her, and add it to his reservoirs of hurt instead. 

Today he gives in to the impulse, briefly reaching out and touching the small of her back. She goes quite still, but not in discomfort. She reacts to art and music the same way. 

“Katarin hugs me all the time,” she says. “And it comforts me, even though I don’t know why. But I guess there doesn’t have to be a reason for such things.” 

“No,” he says. 

Incredibly, they lay out blankets, and end up having a picnic in the shadows of the ancient esper’s bones. The whole thing should be macabre, but Locke ends up focusing on the laughter and chatter of the children from Mobliz. Terra even practices some very low-level fire spells, heating up some stew for the more finicky eaters. Even after the food is gone, no one seems inclined to leave right away. A few of the participants lie down and doze under the blue sky. 

Terra and Locke end up ensconced against a hill some meters away. They’re near enough to keep an eye on everyone, and most threats can be seen from hours away. There’s still a possibility of the ground yawning open and a demon pouring out but, just now, all of his grandmother’s legends seem fictional. Like something that manifested on a different planet. 

Terra does seem pale, though. 

“Are you okay?” He still remembers the invocations for certain cure spells. But there was no magic that combatted fatigue, or more persistent illnesses. Nothing in his repertoire. 

Terra picked up a rock and threw it at a rottiing sapling. She’d definitely learned that action from time with him. 

“Magic is difficult for me lately.” Her voice has the roughness of someone admitting a long-concealed truth. “You saw it earlier. I have to work so much harder to do basic spells. They leave me drained.” 

He counts up everything he saw from her today. Cure, scan, fire at the very least. And who knows what else necessity had required during the course of the day. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Terra looks at him. “Aren’t you going to ask me why?” It’s a fair question. During her time with the Returners, her abilities had been the source of debate and hope. And constant, constant questioning. Locke had not been an innocent party in all of that. 

“If you had theories, you would have told me.” 

They pass a bottle of cider back and forth. Locke’s biggest source of Mobliz-related culture shock had been the casual drinking of alcohol, even by the children (though there’s was very watered down). He understands that the process of making it often led to burning out diseases in water, but it had still surprised him. Duane and Katarin also loved a drink that was created from fermented milk (though lately Katarin couldn’t seem to keep it down.) Locke had tried that once, thought it vile, but somehow finished his whole glass and also lost most of his memories of _that_ particular night. 

Cure spells rarely worked on hangovers. 

“They don’t know about me being half esper,” Terra confesses. She doesn’t have to point towards who she means, but Locke thinks she wouldn’t have gestured anyway. They’re sitting downwind, and it means Locke is her only audience. Otherwise, her words are carried away to an audience of unhearing parched earth and shriveled plants. “Things are so good with them that I don’t want to lose it. Although…” There’s that familiar empty space between words, as she tries to work something out. There’s a light in her eyes, and it’s the same one Edgar got when poking through a machine’s gears and wires. 

“Although, I’m happy with you, too. You know everything about me, and you’re still here.” 

_Of course, of course._ In the past it would have tripped out of his tongue, glib and brisk. But, as he’d mused earlier, there’s no need for haste anymore. So he lets the compliment settle into him, just as he has allowed her to work cure spells on him in the past. 

“Hey, it’s a mutual thing,” he kind of mumbles, noting that Terra really is so much better at naming things that he has ever been. “Although, from everything I’ve seen, knowing you’re a half-esper won’t change anything for them either.” He nods in the direction the kids. Verbal displays of affection seemed uncommon in Mobliz, but it was obvious in the way that the kids brought all the non-edible to a vase in Terra’s room. It was obvious in the way that Duane and Katarin made sure to put a blanket over Terra if she ever fell asleep on a couch, or with her head on the dining hall table. 

Terra doesn’t have a response for that, but this time she’s the one to reach for his hand. It’s a rare pleasure to sit in silence, and even rarer pleasure to enjoy a day where the weather doesn’t fight them. If anything, it enhances happiness. He can almost smell growing things on the wind, though that might be an illusion, or wishful thinking. 

“Locke, can I kiss you?” 

Horribly, his first instinct is to joke like _I don’t know, can you?_ Old habits. For someone who didn’t have a way with words, he could be overly precise with semantics. 

Then the full meaning hits, and it should be terrifying. It should be like a betrayal of Rachel (and maybe some of that is still there; maybe it will always be there unless he faces it, chips away at it, tries to find out who is in this remade world.) 

Mostly, it’s like a good kind of aftershock. 

“Okay,” he says, and his voice is a bit thin. 

He holds her face in his hands, and admits he’s been wanting to know how her hair would feel against his palms. It’s smooth, comforting, like letting his fingers trail through a recovery spring. Their lips meet, and it all tastes a little bit like apples from the cider. He has to remember how to do this, he has to remember all the right ways to move. It’s been a while since he’s kissed anyone, and he’s pretty sure Terra never has, but they figure it out together. They can’t do much when any of the kids could look over and see them, and Locke isn’t sure he’s up to much more than this today. All the same, it reawakens nerves he had long forgotten, and Terra’s hand strokes down the back of his head and neck, ending in the place between his shoulder blades. 

It’s good to be touched. It’s good to be wanted. In this world, a kiss was probably an extravagance, but it was also an act of defiance. Anything that brought people together in love was an act of defiance. 

When Terra pulls back, her cheeks are a bit red, as though kissing had burned away some of her exhaustion. There’s nothing particularly shy or bashful about her. 

“So that’s why people like doing that.” Her smiles are rare, but so are his. And yet that’s what they’re both doing. He wants to ask what made her request this, but maybe attraction is self-evident. Maybe he shouldn’t twist such a thing into impenetrable knots. 

It can be so hard to just let things exist as they are, though. But he’ll try. 

“I guess that means I did alright, huh?”

“Yeah, hopefully that isn’t the only time though.” 

He has to think about his answer, but Terra doesn’t seem offended by his need to decide. 

“No, it won’t be.” 

When they make their way back to the rest of Mobliz, he decides the world isn’t over at all. It’s just different.

**Author's Note:**

> Locke is an interesting character, with quite a dark streak. I've always been interested in how he vacillates between the future and the past, and he's not always particularly healthy about either. This AU really spoke to me because him spending more time with a post-Mobliz Terra (aka a Terra who's quite confident about a lot of things, and has much more firm grip on her past) would be a challenge for him. Anyway, it was a lot of fun exploring what an optimistic moment might look like for him in the World of Ruin.


End file.
